Tech I Can't Live Without: BABii

BABii opens up about the technology she can't do without. Dive in below.

I used to use lots of hardware but I pretty much live inside my laptop nowadays. It's just so much more streamlined, and it means that I can be nomadic when making music, which suits me as I seem to never be in the same place for more than like three days at the moment, I don't even use any midi controllers anymore, just my laptop keyboard. My live setup, on the other hand, is a bit of a different story. I HATE USING LAPTOPS LIVE! I don't wanna be using the thing I use to reply to emails and do my taxes on as an instrument, it feels really wrong to me. Live I use an SPD-SX with an old simmons drum pad as an external trigger (because I think it looks cool), an Arturia Microbrute, and a boss vocal performer.

I couldn’t live without my Arturia Microbrute, it is tiny, but boy can that 'lil thing throw out some low frequencies, It really makes a big difference to the overall sonic spectrum when I play live, if bass is coming out of my SPD it doesn't nearly throw out the same amount bottom end. I love it, it's really small, but it's a beast. I use it mostly for bass, but it's made a couple of appearances as a big squeaky lad. I also love the way you make presets on it with the little cardboard overlays and then draw all over it with a pen. I bought it a long time ago at GAK in Brighton, where I used to follow my BBF around all day and stop her from doing any work. I kinda bought it on a whim and I didn’t use it for ages, but now I use it all the time.

In terms of software stuff, it's really hard to pick one, because I am in a love triangle with GRM tools and Soundtoys, but one I that I would be completely debilitated without is the Soundtoys Tremolator. It's the best plugin I have ever had, it's so good for making complex rhythms with any kinda sound, the amount that I use it has slowly escalated over time and it's nearly on every song of the record I am making at the moment. Although I recently acquired their pitch shifting Little Alter Boy plugin recently on Black Friday and I feel like it might eventually take the thrown in the hierarchy of my plugins pretty soon. Also, shout out the GRM tools, I don’t really know how to use them properly still, they are so abstract, but I always accidentally make something cool with them, and they make me feel like I am baby trying to figure out what a calculator does.